Maria Nepomuceno
Cunhó
September 2–October 11, 2025
Sikkema Malloy Jenkins is pleased to present Cunhó, a solo exhibition of sculptural works by Maria Nepomuceno, on view from September 2 until October 11, 2025. The title of exhibition is an invented word used as a nickname for Nepomuceno by the artist’s mother. A public opening reception with the artist will be held on Thursday, September 4, from 6–8pm.
Maria Nepomuceno’s chimerical sculptures and wall installations meld the organic with the inorganic, in both shape and substance. Her practice integrates both traditional Brazilian craftsmanship and contemporary materials into her own personal techniques of sewing, weaving, beading, and ceramics. The spiral is essential to her work and reflects the form’s ubiquity in nature and signifying the perpetual flow of time and energy. Sewn into whorled discs and soft pockets, the spiraling coils enmesh with luminous orbs, bottle gourds, rows of beadwork, and woven straw. The resulting works evoke a vast biological spectrum ranging from microscopic cells to marcocosmic landscapes, all vibrantly inhabiting the gallery space.
The theme of abundance is vital to Nepomuceno’s work and its propensity towards the infinite, expressed through thousands of colored beads, unceasing spirals, and endless permutations of form and material. Abundance, for Nepomuceno, is not simply a matter of physical volume but a state of plenitude and continuous expansion. Blending diverse morphologies with traditional craft and contemporary installation, the works in Cunhó each sustain their own unique sculptural makeup while simultaneously embodying the boundless potential for reproduction and recombination.
Maria Nepomuceno was born in 1976 in Rio de Janeiro, where she continues to live and work. Recent solo exhibitions include Big Bang Boca, Instituto Artium de Cultura, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Cordão Forte, Lugar Comum, Salvador, Brazil (2022); Dentro e fora infinitamente, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2022); and Refloresta!, Portico Library, Manchester, United Kingdom. In 2024, her work was featured in Panorama Monferrato, a project staged by ITALICS across four villages in the Piedmont region of Italy.
Nepomuceno’s work is included in the public collections of the Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Magasin III, Stockholm, Sweden; and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida.